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The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature

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2016 Chinese literature anthology
The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature: Writings from the Mainland in the Long Twentieth Century
The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature
EditorYunte Huang
LanguageEnglish
GenrePoetry and urban fiction anthology
Published2016
PublisherW. W. Norton & Company
Publication placeNew York City, United States
Pages624
ISBN978-0-393-35380-8

The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature: Writings from the Mainland in the Long Twentieth Century is an anthology of Chinese literature edited by Yunte Huang and published in 2016 by W. W. Norton & Company. Huang, a professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, described the book as a "search for the soul of modern China" in the introduction.

Contents

The book is 600 pages long and has works spanning about 100 years until its publishing date, with almost 50 authors represented. The works were translated by multiple people.

At the beginning of the anthology, Huang reveals that copyright conflicts prevented the inclusion of works that would have otherwise been a part of the anthology, specifically Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang and Fortreess Besieged by Qian Zhongshu.

The works were placed in three sections: the Republican Era which spans from 1911 to 1949 and includes works from the New Culture Movement; the Revolutionary Era, spanning 1949 to 1976; and the Post-Mao Era, which has works since 1976. The portions of the book post 1990 are heavily focused on poetry and have less emphasis on urban fiction.

Part One: 1911–1949 works

Part Two: 1949–1976 works

1976–2016 works

Reception

Julia Lovell of The New York Times wrote that "it’s heartening to see a serious publisher, one whose list is geared to the general reader, invest in an anthology that manages to combine the established canon with less-well-known selections." She argued that the book should have included works by Eileen Chang, and that male writers were represented too heavily in this anthology of modern Chinese writing.

References

  1. ^ Lovell, Julia. "‘The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature,’ Edited by Yunte Huang" (Archive). The New York Times. February 7, 2016. Retrieved on March 5, 2016.
  2. "The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature" (Archive). Publishers Weekly. January 4, 2016. Retrieved on March 5, 2016.
  3. Donoghue, Steve, "'The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature' is a sumptuous sampler" (Archive). Christian Science Monitor. March 3, 2016. Retrieved on March 5, 2016.
  4. Huang, Yunte (2016). "Acknowledgments". The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature: Writings from the Mainland in the Long Twentieth Century. New York City: W. W. Norton & Company. pp. xi–xii. ISBN 978-0-393-35380-8.


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